A Dream For Endymion
by Goldberry
Summary: She can barely feel herself sometimes, in the moonlight, as if she has become Selene dancing among moon craters whilst dreaming of a man dreaming of her. [1xR]


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Author's Notes: Wow, it's been a long time since I've been in this section, hasn't it? ;) I was pulled back momentarily by The Black Rose, Loyce, and Gundam Girl, to which this story is dedicated. For your reference, the name of "Selene" is used to refer to a moon goddess of Greek mythology. Endymion was the handsome shepherd she fell in love with and to whom was given eternal life and sleep.

Enjoy.

A Dream for Endymion

She thinks there is nothing better than moonlight. It takes away too vivid scars and gives shadows instead, hidden places filled with secrets and a gentle covering of sweet silver to wash away the daytime. It dusts his hair with star sprinkles and makes his skin glow pale and smooth, cool beneath the touch of her slender fingers. It fills the valleys of their rumpled sheets and paints the crests with shine, bringing illusions of faraway landscapes. She can barely feel herself, sometimes, in the moonlight, as if she has become Selene dancing among moon craters whilst dreaming of a man dreaming of her.

She thinks there is nothing better than watching him sleep, his face turned towards her, dark hair falling over the bridge of his nose and obscuring his eyes. He is gentle in repose, one arm curved over her stomach like a wayward thought, the ends of his fingers tangled in a fall of muted sunshine. She wonders what he sees at night, if he's himself or someone else. She knows, though, that the night is his most precious time, a moment in stillness that he captures with her, to be put in a glass jar like a handful of fireflies. The day was for war and hate and soldiers, but the twilight lay in the circle of her arms, a respite for the heart.

She thinks that one day there will be no more comings and goings, breezing in and out of each other lives like whispers, flicking drops of hope and determination towards each other as they pass. She wishes for a time when she won't have to stare at the sky and imagine him, when he could stand with her and count the constellations and know he no longer had to fly among them. She wants to show him how the world could be, should be. She wants to fashion that world and paint it, spinning it on its axis like an ornament.

She thinks it's very difficult being in love with Heero Yuy.

She supposes it's not much easier being in love with her. He has not said the words but she can feel it in his touch, the way he comes to her of an evening, the smoldering depths of his cobalt eyes as he looks at her. There is a weary gentleness in his hands, in the same fingers that grip guns and end lives. She doesn't know how he does it but he sometimes gazes at her as if she were something new, bright, untarnished in a smudged galaxy. She would never tell him that she was not so innocent, not so shining. Inside her soul, she feels the weight of a broken kingdom and shattered ideals, hides them so he won't cut himself on the edges of her heart. He has seen enough blood, most especially his own.

She thinks there is nothing better than dreaming. Dreams keep her afloat when everything else threatens to pull her under. She hopes _she_ is his dream, holding his head above the water, keeping him from the depths. It's silly to crave that, but she does. She needs to be needed by him. Without it, there was only loneliness and empty nights and cracked ethics. He is her heartbeat.

She smiles in the dark at the irony. A bringer of death is her pull of life. A man raised to kill, to smite all enemies no matter who, was the one man who could bring peace to her. Did he know it? She doesn't think so. He doesn't think of things in those terms. The arena of words belongs to her and so she makes of them what she wants, twirling them about whimsically until some hidden truth comes unraveled. She does it for all those who depend on her, who look to her, but most of all, she does it for him.

There is a smoky remembrance of hazy images when he opens his eyes, the only moment when she is sure that he is himself, the _other_ self, the one before all the training and ruined battlefields. Then, in an instant, the blue irises clear and he stills, sleep and dreams gone and only cold reality left. She smiles at him, the barest of expressions, and doesn't touch him. His mind is still waking and there are other things in his memory besides her.

"It's not morning yet," she tells him, knowing he already knows it but needing to remind him anyway. The sunrise brings absence and she wards it away with denial. He doesn't mind.

"You're not sleeping," he remarks, his voice so low it's more a sensation than a sound. Her bones tingle with the vibrations.

Finally she touches him, stroking a line down his jaw. "You're here," she says in answer, widening her smile. There's so little time and she won't share him, even with dreams. "And I don't want to miss it," she continues, watching a flicker of a question dance its way across his face. No one else but her would have noticed.

"Miss what?"

"Anything."

And she kisses him, gently, tempting him from the paradise of oblivion to another heaven altogether. He follows her and the night turns from cool to hot, the stars spinning dizzily overhead as the moon goddess closes her eyes. For this moment, there is no dawn or dusk, just a brief interlude of passing comets giving into gravity.

When the world lies quiet again, she moves tumbled locks away from his face softly, her gaze on the ceiling, knowing he has already left her. He's somewhere in the blank dreamscape of the exhausted and she's happy about it. Nightmares do not come to those who have no energy to fear them. He will sleep soundly.

A hand tightens on hers and her eyes widen in surprise. "I thought you were asleep."

"I came back for you."

And this time it is she who follows, trusting him, fingers intertwined. He leads her through painted stories and temporary Edens and shows her the pathway through a clutter of useless thoughts. She leaves iridescent footprints on colorful imaginings and laughs because he can smile there.

Maybe one day they won't need their nighttimes. Maybe one day they'll have daytimes together and regret only the shortness of hours in the light.

Relena's beginning to think that dream is not so impossible after all.

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The End.


End file.
